Author: Julia Ott

My project has been working on creating a level of Beat Saber for the song Way Less Sad by AJR. This project has showcased my skills by showing what I have learned how to do in beat mapper towards the end of the year. I have done many other projects throughout the year in here but I started doing beat mapper in the 4th quarter.

https://beatmapper.app/docs/manual/getting-started

Above is a link to the beat mapper guide that I used when I was getting started on creating my song. The project has gone really well, some successes include completing the first 2 minutes of the song and picking up on how to place the blocks relatively easily. Some of the more difficult parts or failures of the project include the first song that I worked on and accidentally deleted because I didn’t know it had to be saved, and screen recording my final video. It was difficult to screen record because I couldn’t get the volume to work at first but after I switched to a different app, I was able to make it work. If I had time I would continue this project to complete the whole song, I have completed about 2/3’s but it is very time-consuming and is hard to make a whole song in a short period of time.

I have really enjoyed my time in Science For Inventors, in the beginning of the year with all of the substitute teachers I was a little hesitant, but once we got a long-term sub and got our teacher back the class was really good. At the beginning of the year when Mr. Thocker was here, I mainly focused on 3D printing and tinkercad. I really enjoyed that part of the year but also enjoyed it later on when we got to do more structured projects. Then later on in the year, I started doing more work on the computer, using Unity and Beat Mapper which I also thought was really fun. One thing that I would change about this class is to have more structured projects. I like the flexibility with what we can do but I would like to have a more specific end goal with our projects. Overall, Science For Inventors has been one of my favorite classes this year and I would definitely recommend it to a friend.

My project has changed since my last blog post, I am now working on creating a beat saber level on beat mapper.

My end goal for this project is to get through at least the first 2 minutes of the song and be able to set it up on the headset to actually play the game.

The song I am doing is Way Less Sad by AJR and as of now, I am about 1 minute into the song. I created this as a “hard” level for beat saber and am very excited to try it out.

I don’t know if it will be possible or not but ideally I would want to get this song onto the headset that we have at home so my brother and my mom can see what I created and get a chance to play it.

My game has come very far from the last post. I have a 3D person who can walk around in all directions, my main menu is completed, I have music in the game, and I am about halfway done with level one of my game. My idea has changed slightly from a puzzle game to now a brick breaker type of game.

Right now I have all of the bricks set, the paddle is ready, and there is a ball. I have run into quite a few problems while trying to mash my 3D person with my 2D game and have even had to start the game over once.

I am now back on track and am working every day to get the movements working. Between now and March 25th, I would like to be able to complete the scripts and the coding so the game can actually be played when I demonstrate it.

I expect this to take me a couple of hours, maybe more if I run into problems.

For this semester I will be focusing on creating a game in Unity. Unity is a program that you can create 3D objects in and animate them with code to get them to move the way you want them to. I believe you can also import 3D objects into Unity if you want more complex models but I will be creating simple characters in my game and focusing more on the coding. So far I have accomplished learning how to create 3D objects in unity and I have learned some of the coding techniques.

Right now I have a cylinder, my temporary character, and I have learned how to enter code to make my person jump up and down when pressing a certain button. Right now I am watching a very beginner tutorial on how to use the basics of unity and how to code your objects. My end goal with unity is to create a game where I have a character who can travel around my world(that I will create) and solve various puzzles.

I want to add in some simple puzzles like word search, sudoku, etc. When my player solves a puzzle they will get coins. The game will end when the player gets enough coins to buy the next level. I will probably only have enough time to create 1 level so the game will just end after level 1 or maybe 2 if I have enough time. My next step in this project is to create a more complex character and to get the world created with boundaries of where the character can go.

For my exam project, I chose to create a succulent holder. At first, I wasn’t sure what my design would look like, so I began with a basic Hexagonal shape with a hole in it for the succulent. I knew that I wanted it to hang, so I added a small hole on each side of the holder to thread string through.

I later decided I wanted it to be a character, and I chose Darth Vader. I went back and changed the shape to a cylinder instead of a hexagon.

I messed around with the sides of the design until I got them to look the most like Darth Vader. A challenge that I encountered while I was designing my project was the support of the design. The succulent holder needed support on the bottom to keep the crisp design that I wanted. I tried to flip the design upside down to see if it required less support that way, but it would have needed more.

It does not appear to need any support in the picture, but the entire inside would have required support due to the fact that it is hollow inside. I decided I would print it right side up because that option would use the least amount of support. Another issue that I encountered while designing this project was getting the mask’s mouth to look right. I started by putting a triangle on the face and having it stick out, but it didn’t look right, so I made a hole where that was. I needed a way to add the lines in the mouth, which was very difficult, but I made very skinny rectangular prisms of various sizes and placed them inside the mouth just like the real Darth Vader mask. My favorite part of making this design was that it could be anything I wanted it to be, and there were no set parameters for the actual design itself, other than it had to be a succulent holder or toy. For my design, I chose to use Tinkercad. I decided to use tinkercad over a more advanced program, such as fusion 360, was because I felt that it would help me make a more refined design because I am more comfortable with it. I am printing my project over the weekend and am very excited to see how it turns out.

At the beginning of the year, I did not really have a personal project and I was kind of lost as to what to do when we had free time. A couple of weeks ago I decided I would start to create a level for beat saber and that would become my personal project. I found this website called beat mapper where you can insert any song you have downloaded and start creating a beat saber level.

So far in this project, I have learned many things about what goes into a beat saber level. First of all, it is really time-consuming to create a level if you are trying to make it difficult. I started creating this a few weeks ago and I am only around 45 seconds into the song.

Another thing that I learned while creating this is that you can actually play the level that you created on the VR systems. I also learned that you can put up to 12 blocks to be hit at the same time which seems impossible because you only have 2 hands and it would be hard to hit all of the blocks but it is an option that you can do. I would really like to continue this project into the next semester and eventually get to play it here and hopefully get it downloaded on my quest at home so I can show my family what I created.

When I was told I would be making a Christmas ornament I thought that it would be super cool, In fact, I had already created an ornament that I was gonna give my mom for Christmas. I created that ornament in tinkercad, it was an ornament that said Merry Christmas and had a slot for a picture in the middle. The only issue was it came out huge because I am bad at converting mm to inches. I wanted to try to recreate the same ornament I had already made but in fusion rather than tinkercad and I wanted to make it a better size. I started on fusion really frustrated but was eventually able to pull together the shapes I needed to create my ornament. The one thing that went not too good in this project was the picture slot. I could not get a thin hole to go all the way around to slide my picture in that I had on the first ornament. I tried for a few days but it kept deleting parts of my project. I decided to just print it out and that I will just glue the picture into a divot that I created. Other than that small problem the whole creating and printing of my project went really well. I originally wanted to print it out in black but there was none so I printed it out in white and it looked even better than black. I play on putting a picture of me and my parents in this ornament and giving it to them for Christmas.

My name is Julia, I am a Junior in high school and I am using this blog to write about my experience during my 5th hour Science For Inventors class. After high school, I don’t really know what I want to do as a career but I do know that I will want to attend a college of some sort, probably a school like Michigan Tech. or U of M. In this science class, I am looking forward to getting to explore 3D printing and Virtual reality, I have a virtual reality headset at home so I am looking forward to learning more how to use it and maybe create a world in VR if I get the chance. 2 strengths that I have that will help me with this class are my willingness to persevere and my partial understanding of technology. My personal interest for this class will be creating and designing objects to print off from the 3D printers. The biggest challenge that I think I will have in this class is having very little direction for projects. I think I am going to enjoy this class and the freedom that comes with it a lot.